Welcome back to our big fall discipleship series called The Journey to Freedom and Courage. This is a very important and intentional conversation with the goal of helping us experience our best lives possible by giving us the tools to experience life as God designed it to be. That is discipleship. It is all about equipping us to grow into the very people God created us to be, which is something we are passionate about here at MRC. When you look back over the first few weeks and subjects, you begin to understand just how important this can be. We all want to live with freedom and courage, yet it’s so rare to see. We all want to live our best lives possible, but it is hard to experience that in this challenging world. It’s a world designed to block us from becoming everything God designed us to be, and it does a good job of that. It’s amazing what all gets thrown at us. We deal with hurts, distractions, people stuff, and so much more that it can feel like experiencing freedom and courage in our lives is impossible…but it is possible, and God lays out the pathway for us to get there in Scripture. Our job is to follow it! You know, it’s interesting because as we walk through life and deal with all the things that keep us from experiencing our best lives, we often focus on the people, the adversity, the circumstances that challenge us, the world around us, and the painful moments that seem to come out of nowhere and hit our lives…how could we not focus on them, they are so painful and difficult. We often conclude that the problem is that we have lots of problems! We point to all that stuff, and it becomes our explanation as to why life is so hard and that we aren’t experiencing life as God designed. But, if you think about it, that is reality: life is hard. There are things we can control and things we can’t control. Life is so tough. But in this series, something is building every week, and I have enjoyed how this series keeps pointing back to something we often overlook. We have hard lives, but we make a hard life harder. We make a hard life harder through our choices and inability to surrender our lives to God. We look at all these things that hit our lives and blame them while overlooking the thing that plays maybe the biggest role in all our challenges in life, and that is us! We overlook the person we see in the mirror each day. I see this often in this world and my own life; we…I tend to make a hard life harder and we will keep talking through this today.
This is why we began this journey to live as God designed with the most important decision we can make in life. Do you remember that? It was to align our lives with God. This means that we walk in step with His will and desires for our lives, not our own, not the world, or even other people’s will and desires for our lives. So often, we wrestle with God for control; we stay in this tug of war between His will for our lives and ours, and it makes a hard life harder. But remember, when we align with God’s will for our lives, we can operate at our best. God’s will is not a burden but a guiding light that leads us to our best life. I can look over my life and show you so many times that I have struggled through something God was clearly allowing to unfold that, in the end, as confusing, stressful, or painful as it may have felt, was leading to something better in my life. I often make a hard life harder but don’t realize it’s me doing it and assume it’s the thing hitting my life; how about you? When we align with God rather than fight His will, purposes, and design for our lives, we can experience our best life possible.
Last week, I saw the theme of how we make a hard life harder again as Ken talked to us about staying steadfast through tests and trials. So many of us are going through very difficult tests and trials right now. It has made this fall conversation we are in feel so timely. I really enjoyed his talk last week, and at some level, we can all relate to it because we are all living life on this planet, and it just isn’t easy. We face so many tests and trials in our lives. Towards the end of the talk, Ken gave us four things we shouldn’t do when these moments hit our lives, and if you think about it, he showed us four ways that we so often make a hard life harder.
- We should never assume God is punishing us. (Yet, we often do!)
- We should never assume Jesus isn’t with us. (Yet, we often feel so alone!)
- We should never check out because this may be where Jesus wants us to be a difference-maker. (Yet, it’s so tempting to check out on all that we need most)
- We should never pull away from people and our spiritual family (yet our instincts are often to pull away, and we lose the strength we pull from what God designed us with others!)
Ken and I have been walking with this Spiritual Family for over two decades now, and it’s so tough to watch, but as hard as life is, we make it so much harder through our instincts and choices as life hits and hits hard. Can you relate? I sure can. You know, that list of four things we shouldn’t do in many ways is a great transition to what we are talking about today. This is a fun series we are in, where we will hit many fun and inspiring topics that I am excited to share with you in this series. But, I was thankful to have today’s subject, not because it’s fun and inspiring to talk about but because it is one of my biggest challenges or struggles in life. Today, we talk about loneliness. You may not know this by looking at me, but the two things that I struggle with the most are depression and loneliness. In many ways, these two things go hand in hand, and we often address things like depression, but the concept of loneliness doesn’t always come up. You know what, I think it should because it has been around since the beginning of time. In fact, loneliness is the first “NOT GOOD” that we find in our Bibles!
Genesis 2:18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” NLT
When God created all of creation, including the first human, He saw that it was very good. But it didn’t take long before He saw Adam experiencing loneliness. The human being desperately needed a connection, not just with His Heavenly Father but with other people. From the beginning of time, starting with the first human, loneliness was a thing, and I’m so thankful that we are talking about this today because I believe it’s becoming a more significant problem each year. We see its effects more than ever in our times and culture today. There is so much pain in the lives of people today because so many are walking in isolation, disconnected from God and from people which is living outside of how we were created to be, it’s a growing issue.
“There’s a great deal of scientific evidence that social connectedness is a very strong protector of emotional well-being, and I think there is no question that social isolation has greatly increased in our culture.” Andrew Weir
Let’s start by defining loneliness and then build out from there into the different ways we can face loneliness and some of the major challenges we face if we don’t respond to lonely emotions and seasons of life well. So, let’s start here: What is loneliness?
Loneliness is a sense of sadness or unease due to a lack of meaningful connection with others.
I like that definition and the term meaningful connection because we live in a world of connectivity and social media, and we may think, I am not lonely; I have thousands of friends on social media. Well, you may have thousands of friends on social media, but that isn’t necessarily deep, meaningful connections. A lack of relationships doesn’t cause loneliness; a lack of meaningful connection causes it. I think this is what Solomon was trying to tell us in this word of wisdom that we seem to violate daily in this world of technology.
Proverbs 18:24 A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. NIV
I’m not trying to discourage your social media usage…well, maybe a little, but I want you to see something here today. As good as having many friends who know our name feels, that doesn’t prevent loneliness. We need meaningful connections. We were wired by God this way. Every person is hard-wired to need two primary connections: Connection with God and Connection with Others. Jesus explains this in many ways when He points out the two most important things we can do—love God and love others. A religious leader asks Him what matters most, and Jesus explains that what matters most is our love for God and our love for others. Everything starts there.
Mark 12:29 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The LORD our God is the one and only LORD. 30 And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ 31 The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” NLT
We need and have been wired by God for deep, meaningful connections with God and people; without them, we struggle and feel alone. Without them, we make life harder. Let’s talk about how this can hit our lives because there are many ways loneliness will hit us, and, quite frankly, there are many different sources of lonely seasons and emotions. I will give you a couple of examples. Just try standing up for The Truth, or leading, and making Godly choices! Being that person can definitely lead to loneliness! Ask a leader who has tough decisions to make, a Pastor at a local church, or a coach of a local sports team; it’s lonely to lead, make choices, or stand up for what is true and right. We could look to so many of the great heroes of our faith in Scripture and see how they wrestled with loneliness in their lives. We also deal with many hurts and wounds, and life doesn’t come together the way we would like, and in our pain and hurts, we can feel alone. We can feel stress and pressure and the weight of difficult decisions. We feel the sting of criticism and the disappointment from people and the pain of rejection and betrayal from people in this world. All of which leads to social loneliness. I saw this quote the other day, and it made me think about the painful reality of life with people and how that can lead to loneliness.
“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before and people continue to disappoint them” Jodi Picoult
We must deal with life changes, which isn’t always easy. We can feel misunderstood and criticized by people. We can feel the weight of unfair expectations and deal with people making assumptions or even just lying about us. Life is so hard, and if we aren’t careful, we can make a hard life harder by walking through it alone, accepting the lie that life is a solo journey, and then setting out to do life alone. We must be careful here because loneliness can become destructive when it becomes isolation. We can feel alone when we stand up for what is right. We can feel alone as we walk through pain. We can feel alone when we are tired and fighting off depression or anxiety. But we know we are never really alone because God is with us, but in all that we walk through, we have to remember that truth! We must hold on to that as we walk through loneliness or seasons where we battle this emotion and feeling of loneliness. Isolation is never the answer. It may feel tempting at times, but it’s never the answer. In fact, it can lead us away from where God would want us to be and to the very place our enemy wants us to be, and we need to talk about this. Peter describes the enemy this way…
1 Peter 5:8 Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. NLT
Have you ever seen a nature video where a lion is hunting its prey? You don’t have to be an expert on animal life to see the strategy. The goal is to separate and isolate one of the poor animals from their herd. The lion knows it’s easier to attack prey in isolation than in a herd, and the other animals know their only real strength and protection from a lion is their numbers. The lion prowls around, looking to isolate or separate one of them from the herd. When they find an animal that is alone, well, it’s an easy meal. Our enemy is no different. He has been preying on humanity for a long time, and one of his most effective strategies is isolation and loneliness. I told you this is a challenge for me; my instincts are so often to isolate when things get hard or tough in my life, and I’m telling you from first-hand experience that alone is just not where you want to be. When I first thought about how to discuss loneliness with you, I kept thinking of this trap we can fall into of loneliness and isolation, how dangerous that can be, and how it makes a hard life harder. This makes me think of a moment from the life of David, where he finds himself somewhere he shouldn’t be, and it leads to sin and so much pain as he falls into the enemy’s trap.
2 Samel 11:1-5 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. 2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.” NIV
Here is David, who God calls the man after God’s heart. And we see a clear line in Scripture…in the springtime when Kings (like David) go off to war…David stayed home. He sent the army, but we find David alone on the roof. Scripture tells us that David isn’t where he should be; he isn’t with his men, he isn’t in the strength of his community, he isn’t doing what he should be, he is alone; and how does that go? It doesn’t go well. Leading to lust, adultery, murder, and horrible consequences from these actions. David, a great man of God, got caught in the trap of here, and the enemy got to him while he was alone. We weren’t created or designed to do life alone. This is why David’s son Solomon points out the importance of people and the strength we find when we are together.
Ecclesiastes 4:9 Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: 10 If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! 11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? 12 Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. NIV
When no one is around, and all we have are our own thoughts and feelings, we can be led away from the pathway to life as God desires, and we can spiral down a path we just don’t want to be on. We need people in our lives, yet we often make our hard lives harder by pulling away from people and going it alone. We can’t keep warm, we aren’t as productive or strong, and we are so much more exposed and susceptible to the enemy’s schemes. We just weren’t created to be alone! Alone is where the enemy wants us!
Think about the temptation of Christ for a moment. We have discussed that in each of the first two talks of this series. When does the enemy show up to tempt Jesus? After, he spends 40 days and 40 nights alone. He doesn’t show up until Jesus is isolated to do the tempting. This is where the enemy wants us; we need to remember this, and I also think it’s important to remember that Jesus Himself dealt with loneliness. He experienced this from his followers, his family, the religious leaders, and even His Heavenly Father on The Cross as He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” As we walk through lonely seasons or fight through loneliness, this is a beautiful truth to hold on to: Jesus walked through it, too…He gets us and understands our pain, and He tells us that if He walked through it, we will too!
John 15:18 “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. 19 The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you. 20 Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you. And if they had listened to me, they would listen to you. 21 They will do all this to you because of me, for they have rejected the One who sent me. NLT
Make no mistake about this: we will deal with loneliness as we follow Jesus…but we hold strong, knowing that our God understands us, and walked through it too. With the time we have left, I would like to look at how we respond to lonely feelings and lonely seasons in our lives because they will continue to come at us; if Jesus didn’t avoid them, we wouldn’t either. When facing loneliness, it can be tempting to slide into some things that may feel like they are helping or even allowing life to ease up on us a bit, but they are only making a hard life harder. We can be tempted to medicate ourselves. We may think escaping into alcohol, a substance, or some other thing to numb us will help, but it just drives us deeper into the trap of loneliness. We can be tempted to get busy or go through life in our strength. We can fall quickly into destructive and addictive behaviors this way. We can look for quick fixes to get us out of things we are struggling with that only lead to bigger issues in our lives, and for some of us, we are just tempted to check out, quit on life, and run even further away from all our issues. All of these things may feel like they are helping ease the pressure, but they multiply the issues of our lives, like a snowball running down a hill, getting bigger and bigger as it goes…these choices that we make just make a hard life harder.
So, what can we do? Well, the first thing we need you may not like hearing, but it’s important. We need to look at these challenging and painful moments of our lives as seasons that are given to us for a reason. I know, that sounds lovely when walking through tough stuff, but it is so important. If you think about it, that means a couple of things. First, it means that God is trying to teach, shape, and mold you to grow through the thing you are walking through…and the second thing is a more hopeful reason to frame it as a season. It’s that seasons do come and go. It won’t be forever. It will end, which can be hopeful in hopeless times. Once we frame these painful moments as seasons, we can look to Scripture to see how we should respond to these painful seasons of loneliness in our lives.
The first response we need to have to lonely seasons in our lives is to stick with Jesus!
We persevere. We don’t quit or run. We lean on Him. We call on Him when it seems that He isn’t there! Because He is there!
Hebrews 10:32 Remember those early days after you first saw the light? Those were the hard times! 33 Kicked around in public, targets of every kind of abuse — some days it was you, other days your friends. 34 If some friends went to prison, you stuck by them. If some enemies broke in and seized your goods, you let them go with a smile, knowing they couldn’t touch your real treasure. Nothing they did bothered you, nothing set you back. 35 So don’t throw it all away now. You were sure of yourselves then. It’s still a sure thing! 36 But you need to stick it out, staying with God’s plan so you’ll be there for the promised completion. 37 It won’t be long now, he’s on the way; he’ll show up most any minute. 38 But anyone who is right with me thrives on loyal trust; if he cuts and runs, I won’t be very happy. 39 But we’re not quitters who lose out. Oh, no! We’ll stay with it and survive, trusting all the way. MSG
We must stay at it; we don’t quit; we lean into Jesus in the tough times, allowing us to grow into the very people we were always created to be. Do you see why we had to talk about aligning with God’s will and how we deal with tests and trials in our lives first? We must stay with Jesus! Don’t quit!
The second thing we must do is allow the lonely season with God to transform and deepen our prayer lives!
God invites you to a rich, deep, real prayer life. Lean into prayer, pouring out your soul to Him! I often say this and wish it wasn’t true, but when are we most aware of God? When do we recognize that we need Him in our lives? It’s in our painful and difficult seasons; unfortunately, we will not avoid those times in life. As painful as they are, they also can lead us into a deeper walk with God than ever before. Can we allow those hard times to deepen our need for connection with our Heavenly Father? This is so important: what did Jesus do when He was completely overwhelmed moments before His crucifixion? He went into the Garden and poured it all out to God!
Matthew 26:38 He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” 39 He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” NLT
Is this our instinct? When we are stressed out, overwhelmed, and walking through painful seasons, is this what we do? Do we run to God or check out and pull away? Jesus is so overwhelmed that his soul is crushed to the intensity level that he is sweating blood, and at that moment, he doesn’t check out and isolate. He doesn’t try to numb or escape. He leans into prayer. So often, we make a hard life harder because we do not lean into God and pray in the painful times of our lives. When we do the opposite of that human instinct to check out and lean into our prayer lives in these challenging moments, we grow through them and find deeper connections to our Heavenly Father, which we all need and desire in the deepest part of our soul.
The third way to respond to these challenging moments is to immerse yourself in the Scriptures!
Through these seasons, we can identify and personalize the Scriptures in a new way, seeing and feeling the Scriptures for ourselves in ways we couldn’t before the challenging season of life. It brings scripture to life.
I will give you a recent Scripture that has taken on a new life for me. I have been walking through a lot behind the scenes with family and loved ones. It’s been stressful and, at times, so painful and, at other times, so overwhelming that it has been hard to keep pushing through. I have felt helpless and overwhelmed at times and God dropped this Scripture on me during a morning devotional when I was at probably the lowest point of my life in quite some time.
Lamentations 3:28 When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. 29 Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions: Wait for hope to appear. 30 Don’t run from trouble. Take it full-face. The “worst” is never the worst. 31 Why? Because the Master won’t ever walk out and fail to return. 32 If he works severely, he also works tenderly. His stockpiles of loyal love are immense. 33 He takes no pleasure in making life hard, in throwing roadblocks in the way. MSG
It’s amazing the hope and strength I felt reading that, and I continue to sit in this Scripture, which allows it to minister to me. It’s interesting too because in that scripture it encourages us to alone, and that may sound confusing, but it’s not that you are going to be alone, it’s you getting off by yourself to be with Your Heavenly Father, which is an important thing for us to understand. God’s word can be such a gift! As we immerse ourselves in God’s Word in the painful and challenging times of our lives…we can personalize and understand it at its deepest level in ways we just can’t in the good times of our lives. We can feel and relate to the painful trials found in Scripture and live out God’s Word. So often, in the tough moments of life, we aren’t pouring into God through prayer and His Word, but we decide to check out on Him, and we just make a hard life harder.
The last way we must respond to the painful and lonely seasons of our lives can be challenging and feel risky, but we must reach out and find and create new, meaningful relationships or continue to connect or reconnect with the people we have in our lives.
This goes against my instincts during tough and painful times in my life. I tend to pull inward and not reach out, yet every time I do, I am better and stronger through the people around me. Like Solomon told us, two are simply better than one, yet often, when life hits and hits hard, we make a hard life harder by pulling away from the things we need in our lives. We pull away from God. We stop praying when we need to lean in and pray more. We pull away from God’s Word instead of pouring into it and allowing it to take on new meaning through our experiences. We see this time and time again…life hits and hurts, and we pull away from people in our lives when we need them more in those moments…it’s hard to watch, but we make a hard life harder by isolating and pulling away.
As we close today, I want you to think about this. I told you loneliness has been around since the beginning of time. It is the very first “NOT GOOD” that we find in our Bibles. So, let’s think through a couple of questions as we close. We have been wired by God with a need for two connections: God and people. So, let me ask you, how do you do with this? Are you deeply connected to God? Do you have a meaningful connection or two with people? Notice I didn’t ask how many friends you have on Facebook. Think through this today: How do you deal with these two primary connection points of life? If you aren’t happy with where these things stand, do something about it! Engage God today! Take the “risk” and open up to people, reach out, and connect or reconnect with people in your life. You might be thinking, Sam, if you knew how hard my life is right now, I am just going through so much tough stuff; it’s just not the time for me to work on connecting with God and others. Well, you need to hear me now. If things aren’t going well right now, all the more reason to reach out, take the risk, and find these meaningful connections; I promise you, you will be thankful that you did.
Now I want you to think about your life. Life is hard. That is our reality, but in what ways may you be making a hard life harder? We weren’t meant to do life alone; this has been clear from the very beginning of time. So think this through today, and if you find yourself alone, please don’t stay there. You are loved by God and others, and you are better with God and people in your life. Isolation may be tempting and feel easier, cleaner, or require less work. You may be in so much despair or pain that you don’t feel like trying anymore with God and people, but I promise you, all you are doing as you try to do life on your own is making a hard life harder.
We hope to see you Wednesday night as we dive deeper into this subject!